Still Jim - Honoré Morrow

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by Jim and Pen, he mounted the stile. He was balked by the red-headed woman who towered high above him. Sara reached up and touched her broad back.

      "Walk right ahead, madam," he urged. "You're holding us back."

      The fat woman obediently took a wild step forward, the stair bucked and she stepped firmly backward and sat down violently on Sara's head. Pen and Jim roared with the crowd. The red-headed woman scrambled to the topmost stair again, then turned and shook her fist in Sara's face.

      "Don't you touch me again, you brute!" she screamed. Then she summoned all her energies and took another dignified step upward. Again the stairs bucked. Again the fat woman sat down on Sara's hat. Again the onlookers were overwhelmed with laughter. Pen and Jim feebly supported each other as they rode up and down on the lower step. Sara pushed the woman off his head and again she turned on him.

      "There! You made me swallow my gum! And I'll bet you call yourself a gentleman!"

      Sara, red-faced but grinning, took a mighty step upward, gripped the woman firmly around the waist and lifted her down the opposite side of the stile. Pen and Jim followed with a mad scramble. For a moment it looked as if the red-headed woman would murder Sara. But as she looked at his young beauty her middle-aged face was etched by a gold-toothed smile.

      "Gee, that's more fun than I've had for a year!" she exclaimed and she melted into helpless laughter.

      Coney Island is of no value to the fastidious or the lazy. Coney Island belongs to those who have the invaluable gift of knowing how to be foolish, who have felt the soul-purging quality of huge laughter, the revivifying power of play. Lawyers and pickpockets, speculators and laborers, poets and butchers, chorus girls and housewives at Coney Island find one common level in laughter. Every wholesome human being loves the clown.

      Spent with laughing, Pen finally suggested lunch, and Jim led the way to an open-air restaurant.

      "Let's," he said with an air of inspiration, "eat lunch backward. Begin with coffee and cheese and ice cream and pie and end with clam chowder and pickles."

      "Nothing could be more perfect!" exclaimed Pen enthusiastically, and as nothing surprises a Coney Islander waiter, they reversed the menu.

      When they could hold no more, they strolled down to the beach and sat in the sand. The crowd was very thick here. Nearly everyone was in a bathing suit. Women lolled, half-naked in the sand, while their escorts, still more scantily clad, sifted sand over them. Unabashed couples embraced each other, rubbing elbows with other embracing pairs. The wind blew the smell of hot, wet humans across Jim's face. He looked at Pen's sweet face, now a little round-eyed and abashed in watching the unashamed crowd. It was the first time that Mrs. Manning had allowed Pen to go to Coney Island without her careful eye.

      Jim said, with a slow red coming into his cheeks, "Let's get out of here, Sara."

      "Why, we just got here," replied Sara. "Let's get into our suits and have some fun."

      "Pen'll not get into a bathing suit with these muckers," answered Jim, slowly.

      Pen, who had been thinking the same thing, immediately resented Jim's tone. "Of course I shall," she replied airily. "You can't boss me, Jim."

      "That's right, Pen," agreed Sara. "Let old Prunes sit here and swelter. You and I will have a dip."

      Pen rose and she and Sara started toward the bath house. Jim took a long stride round in front of the two.

      "Sara, do as you please," he drawled. "Penelope will stay here with me."

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       Table of Contents

      "The river forever flows yet she sees no farther than I who am forever silent, forever still."

      Musings of the Elephant.

      "Jim Manning, you've no right to speak to me that way," said Penelope.

      Jim returned her look clearly. "You are to stay here, Pen," he repeated slowly.

      "You've got your nerve, Still!" exclaimed Sara. "Pen's as much my company as she is yours. Quit trying to start something. Pen, come along."

      Jim did not stir for a moment, then he jerked his head toward the bath house. "Go ahead and get into your suit, Sara. Penelope and I will wait here for you."

      Sara had seen Jim in this guise before, on the football field. For a moment he scowled, then he shrugged his shoulders. "You old mule!" he grunted. "All right, Pen. You pacify the brute and I'll be back in a few minutes."

      Pen did not yield so gracefully. She sat down in the sand with her back half turned to Jim and he, with his boyish jaw set, eyed her uncomfortably. She did not speak to him until Sara appeared and, with an airy wave of the hand, waded into the water.

      "I think Sara looks like a Greek god in a bathing suit," she said. "You'd know he was going to be a duke, just to look at him."

      Jim gave a good imitation of one of Uncle Denny's grunts and said: "He isn't a duke—yet—and he's gone in too soon after eating."

      "And he's got beautiful manners," Pen continued. "You treat me as if I were a child. He never forgets that I am a lady."

      "Oh, slush!" drawled Jim.

      Pen turned her back, squarely. Sara did not remain long in the water but came up dripping and shivering to burrow in the hot sand. Pen deliberately sifted sand over him, patting it down as she saw the others do, while she told Sara how wonderfully he swam.

      Sara eyed Jim mischievously, while he answered: "Never mind, Pen. When I'm the duke, you shall be the duchess and have a marble swimming pool all of your own. And old Prunes will be over here coaching Anthony Comstock while you and I are doing Europe—in our bathing suits."

      Penelope flushed quickly and Sara's halo of romance shone brighter than ever.

      "The Duchess Pen," he went on largely. "Not half bad. For my part, I can't see any objection to a girl as pretty as you are wearing a bathing suit anywhere, any time."

      Pen looked at Sara adoringly. At sixteen one loves the gods easily. Jim, with averted face, watched the waves dumbly. It had been easy that morning to toss speech back and forth with the boat crowd. But now, as always, when he felt that his need for words was dire, speech deserted him. Suddenly he was realizing that Pen was no longer a little girl and that she admired Saradokis ardently. When the young Greek strolled away to dress, Jim looked at Pen intently. She was so lovely, so rosy, so mischievous, so light and sweet as only sixteen can be.

      "Cross patch. Draw the latch! Sit by the sea and grouch," she sang.

      Jim flushed. "I'm not grouchy," he protested.

      "Oh, yes you are!" cried Pen. "And when Sara comes back, he and I are going up for some ice cream while you stay here and get over it. You can meet us for supper with Aunt Mary and Uncle Denny."

      Jim, after the two had left, sat for a long time in the sand. He wished that he could have a look at the old swimming hole up at Exham. He wished that he and Uncle Denny and his mother and Pen were living at Exham. For the first time he felt a vague distrust of Sara. After a time he got into his bathing suit and spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of the water, dressing only in time to meet the rest for supper.

      After supper the whole party went to one of the great dancing pavilions. Uncle Denny and Jim's mother danced old-fashioned waltzes, while Sara and Jim took turn about whirling Penelope through two steps and galloping through modern waltz steps. The music and something in Jim's face touched Pen. As he piloted her silently over the great floor in their first waltz, she looked

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